Soldier from Yemen’s government-in-exile opens fire, killing two Saudi troops and wounding another

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A soldier from Yemen’s exile government opened fire on Saudi troops as they trained in eastern Yemen, killing two of them and wounding another in a rare insider attack during the The kingdom’s nearly decade-long war there, officials said Saturday. .

The attack in the eastern province of Hadramawt comes as a result of a years-long ceasefire between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Houthi rebels, largely despite the militants’ continued attacks on shipping in the Red Sea corridor. Although the Houthis did not claim the attack, at least one Houthi official hailed it as “the beginning and an indication of a harsh future that awaits the invaders.”

Meanwhile, U.S. warplanes carried out new attacks on Houthi positions that lasted until early Sunday morning, the U.S. military said. The attacks come after the militants are believed to have shot down another US reconnaissance drone over the country.

The attack on Saudi forces took place on Friday evening in Seiyun, a city about 500 kilometers east of Sanaa. While troops were training there at a Saudi-run base, the soldier opened fire, killing an officer and a non-commissioned officer, the state-run Saudi Press Agency said, citing a military statement.

“The Joint Forces Command underlines that this cowardly attack by the ‘Lone Wolf’ does not represent the honorable members of the Yemeni Ministry of Defense,” the statement said. The dead and the other injured Saudi soldiers have been returned to the kingdom, it added.

Aidarous al-Zubaidi, the leader of the Yemeni Successionist Southern Transitional Council, identified the soldier who carried out the attack as belonging to the First Military Region, which is based outside Seiyun.

Police in the area published photos of the soldier and said a reward of 30 million Yemeni rials had been offered for information leading to the soldier’s arrest. That’s worth about $15,000 on the black market.

Authorities did not provide a motive for the attack. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemeni branch of the militant group, has long operated around Hadramawt. However, the group did not immediately claim the attack. A recent United Nations expert report states that the al-Qaeda group and the Houthis have begun to “coordinate operations directly with each other.”

The Houthis, meanwhile, have not claimed the attack. However, Houthi official Hamid Rizq praised the attack in a post on the social platform

“The heroic operation is the beginning and an indication of a harsh future that awaits the invaders,” Rizq wrote.

Yemen has been embroiled in a decade-long war since the Houthis stormed into Sanaa from their northern strongholds in September 2014. A Saudi-led coalition entered the war in 2015 on behalf of the Yemeni government-in-exile. The war became further internationalized, with Iran backing the Houthis with weapons and support that pushed the conflict into a years-long stalemate.

The war has killed more than 150,000 people, including combatants and civilians, and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, killing tens of thousands more. A ceasefire that expired in October 2022 has largely held since then, even as the Houthis have seized on the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon.

On Saturday evening, Houthi-led media reported US airstrikes on areas around Sanaa. The airstrikes continued into Sunday morning and also included locations in Amran province, just outside the capital, the Houthis said. The rebels made no immediate assessment of damage from the attacks.

The U.S. military later told The Associated Press on Sunday that it was carrying out airstrikes “on numerous Iranian-backed storage facilities for Houthi weapons in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.” It described the sites as housing advanced conventional weapons used to attack military and civilian ships in the Red Sea corridor, but offered no other immediate details.

The US military has targeted radar stations, military bases and drone and missile launch sites since beginning its ongoing air campaign against the Houthis in January.